Power or Love
by Alexandrea Romanzesco
Summary: one-shot. As Vegeta's life takes a turn once again, he takes some time to contemplate his life and the decisions he's made up 'till now.


A/n My first real one POV one-shot. I tried to write this like I write my blogs (minus the insane amount of curse words and slang). I tried to write this as if someone was directly talking to you, like they're reciting something from memory but I didn't want it to be in first person. I'm just hoping I've achieved it.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the chocolate chip cookie that is in my mouth…yum.

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Power or Love.

Vegeta laid on the bed that he shared with Bulma in Capsule Corp. It was a very normal bed, not too hard or too springy. Just normal. Normal like how the room was normal; calm green walls with a few dressers and a closet and a balcony.

Normal like the normal earth clothes on his back, like the normal party going on a few levels below him.

And he closed his eyes, he waited. He waited for all of this is to disappear. For his whole world to fall apart. It most certainly wouldn't have been the first time that something like that would've happened.

Because despite all this normal, Earth things around him, he felt content, peaceful.

_At home._

He had felt like this once before, before the tournament, and before Buu came. These were the feelings that drove him to wanting the evil again. These feelings were so foreign to him, so damn hard to just grasp and accept and understand.

All he had known before this were three things: pride, anger, and hatred. Those were the feelings that ruled his life. They controlled every action, every thought, and Vegeta had lived with them for so long that they were like a home. A hut he built around his soul, a place in his mind where he felt at home. He felt comfortable because he understood these feelings so well. They worked as a team; pride was the leader and kept the others in line. Anger and hatred were best friends, because as long as he was angry at something, he hated it with just as much passion. They guarded the hut and they did a damn well job at it.

So when he decided to train on Earth, these feelings were there to protect him. They kept him focused on the task at hand. They told him to train: train harder, train longer. To torture his body to it's breaking point, and when that was achieved, to push past that.

Now pride was always with Vegeta, it was the one feeling he couldn't, and would never, lose. However, with hatred and anger, they began to ebb in and out of him when he had really gotten to know her.

Bulma Briefs, the loud, annoying and simultaneously intriguing girl he lived with. It was fine at first, he would get hurt, and she would nurse him back to health. For a while, this was their relationship. Vegeta got himself everything he needed and when he couldn't get it for himself, she would step in and get it for him. No questions asked, no problems to speak of.

It wasn't until she opened her mouth the problems began. Suddenly, she wanted to know all about him. She continually asked him random questions about his life, how he felt, what he liked. Vegeta tried to avoid these questions; the hatred and the anger helped him to ignore all these things.

They told him to not worry, the three years will be done, he'll beat the androids, and life would be right again. He could travel around space and be content and alone, just the way he liked it. It was simple; all he had to do was focus, focus, focus. And this was all very simple, simple, simple.

Then there was the day when he actually mulled over one of the insane woman's questions, and answered it.

The question was very inane, just Bulma asking him if he preferred one type of shoe to the other. From then on, he started getting the shoes he really liked. This was when Vegeta realized that getting something he wanted, not just needed for basic survival, was very enjoyable.

For the first time in his life, he ignored anger and hatred and answered more of Bulma's questions. As the answers came, the things he wanted came. It came to the point that she was downright spoiling him just for the sake of spoiling him.

This was so odd to him. Usually, if someone gave him something that he wanted he would have to pay a grave price in return. However, with Bulma, she just kept giving him stuff because she wanted to.

Anger and hatred reared their ugly heads and decided that this spoiling had gone on far enough. They demanded that he stopped answering questions like that. Therefore, Vegeta decided to start answering her _other_ questions.

How was it like on your planet?

_It was nice, but I don't remember it much._

Why don't you?

_The planet was destroyed when I was 5, between my birth and that time I spent two-thirds of my life on spaceships or in other places._

The inquisition was much like that. Going on and on as Bulma tried to know more about him. However, it was vastly different from the other times people tried to "get to know the real Vegeta." Those times, people tried to dissect him, to know what made him tick so they could use it against him at the first possible chance.

Bulma wanted to get to know him just because; just because she cared about him, which was simultaneously refreshing and scary. Anger and hatred had ruled the roost and when Bulma began to seep into his mind, they didn't know how to react. At first, they were mean, even violent, they wanted this alien woman, and all the alien feelings she made him feel to disappear. They wanted her gone, at all costs.

So Vegeta rebelled against her. He fought more, he shut her out, and he trained even harder. He attempted anything to just get her to leave, to get her off his back.

Nevertheless, Bulma held on. She kept on trying to get in until he obeyed. He couldn't help but want to talk to her. Her whole aura soothed him; even her annoying voice calmed him done when she spoke at a normal level.

Their relationship had just fallen into place after that. It was very basic and simple, uncluttered. Everyone else was off doing their own business during this time and that left Bulma and Vegeta to exist in their own little world. They weren't bothered by the outside world when they were together and he liked it that way. Until then, he couldn't have imagined not having her around. She was a boundless source of entertainment for him, a puzzle that he actually felt like going through the tedium of solving.

For a while it was fine. Until the three years were over, and the delicate bubble that surrounded the couple shattered. They had to return to the real world and the regular, old Vegeta had fallen back into place. Despite the fact that Bulma didn't really like it, she tolerated it, and let him do what he had to do. Vegeta secretly loved this about her but he started to feel strained.

In his mind, he was starting to come to a crossroads: be normal and relatively happy with Bulma and his new son or be angry, mean, hateful, and incredibly powerful?

He was at a loss. Especially when he had achieved Super Saiyan. He could completely focus on developing it, hone it so when the day came, he could fulfill his eternal goal of defeating Kakarott. On the other hand, he could focus on family life with the one person who had ever tried to understand him.

He tried to do both. Desperately, desperately Vegeta tried to but somehow he always had to choose. He had to choose between training an extra hour or spending time with his family. He had to choose between pushing his body farther, or to not torture himself and try to calm down.

To him, the balance never worked. Vegeta was always off-kilter, always doing something wrong. He was either putting too much focus on one thing or the other, becoming too exhausted to accomplish something important. This life strained beyond all belief, making want to just leave sometimes, to just escape the world he had been pushed into. Not to mention, the anger and hate were all but totally suppressed, and deep within him, he felt as if he had lost a long-time friend.

Then it came, the tournament. The tournament where he met Babidi's lackeys and discovered the power that had been unleashed in them. Vegeta knew without that possession they had, the warriors were nothing…but with it… it was unbelievable.

Once Vegeta knew all about Babidi, Buu, and the huge mess that was to ensue, he began to form a plan. A plan to be possessed by Babidi, a plan to unleash what he so wanted to get out of him. Feelings that had lain dormant for so long were finally going to see the light again. He wasn't worried about his mind being taken, he knew he was too strong to fall for that but the others didn't. They would just assume that Vegeta was too weak to overcome it, because they had always underestimated him. If anyone were to blame, it would lie solely on the evil wizard, not Vegeta, who was good and docile now.

And when it had happened? Vegeta had never felt such a powerful release. It felt like a sore finally being lanced, an eruption of power he had never known. At first, it felt so good, so _right _to be in possession of such a great well of renewed strength. There were no chains to hold him down, no rules or restrictions. He broke through the normalcy that had once enveloped him. He was free. This euphoria helped fuel his rage toward Kakarott and when they fought, it was almost blissful. Vegeta was finally able to vent out all his rage and anguish that had been saved up.

It seemed like this rush would never end until, like any typical high, the crash came. It wasn't a huge rush and he honestly blamed Kakarott for ruining his time to shine. Vegeta had been provoked to go on a rant by him and if he hadn't been listening to what he had been what he was saying he would've missed it. He mentioned settling down, starting a family, and then he felt a dull, familiar pang in his chest. Vegeta really couldn't believe that he now had a family, two of the most important people in his life who loved him just as he was. A wife and a son who would drop everything to give him something that he needed. Then the question that had eternally been on the back of his mind since he started a relationship with Bulma barged into the forefront:

What was truly more important to him now? Power or love?

Vegeta believes it was then, while he continued to pummel his life-long nemesis, that he figured out the answer.

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" Vegeta?"

" Vegeta? Are you sleeping?" Bulma paused. " Okay, I know for certain I've only been out of the room for a few minutes."

He opened his eyes and looked at his wife. She watched him with her hands on her hips and a gleam in her eye.

" I assure you that you took much more time than that." He grunted out as he sat up on their bed. Bulma broke out into a smile and waved a little white stick in the air.

"It's done," She held the stick out to him uneasily, " But I couldn't bring myself to read it. So I think you should."

Vegeta just stared at her for a moment; she just stood there anxiously.

" Today would be nice. We do have a party to go back to." Bulma waved it around, waiting for Vegeta to take it from her. She looked as if she was about to burst. Not just burst, but completely explode, until there was nothing but little Bulma-bits scattered on the carpet.

Vegeta honestly couldn't take the suspense either, so he gingerly took the stick from her and glanced at the little screen. "Hmm, it seems to be a little unclear to me."

"Vegeta!" She groaned out. "Get on with it."

He smirked at her and watched as she suppressed a smile. " Let's see… a little pink cross. I'll assume that's a good thing."

After a few moments, he then realized that Bulma hadn't replied. He glanced up to see her with her fingertips over her mouth as if she was trying to hide the grin that was spreading over her face. Vegeta waited for something to come out of her mouth but she seemed frozen.

" I'm amazed that for once you're actually speech—"

At this very second Bulma let out a shriek. A very high-pitched, piercing shriek that seemed to permeate through every ounce of the building. Vegeta was slightly embarrassed, he knew everyone downstairs had heard this and were probably abuzz with conversation on why such an odd noise had been made.

"Vegeta! We're going to have another baby!" She plunked down next to him on the bed and began to ramble. " I need to find all those boxes of baby clothes and the crib and plan a shower and get out all that silly child-proofing stuff and…" She went on and on. When Bulma finally calmed down, she turned to Vegeta, " I'm sorry, I'm just so excited."

" I know you are." He tried to smile, to express what he was feeling but all his mouth could do was form a line. "I am too."

"Well, you certainly don't _look_ excited." Bulma said before she lay back on the bed. " I mean, you look like I did when I found out I was pregnant the first time around."

"Really?" He asked earnestly as he mimicked her movements, positioning himself so that her head lay on his chest. " And how exactly do I look?"

" Confused…and a little anxious." She shifted slightly in his arms before she spoke again, this time in a quieter voice, " Vegeta, is something wrong?"

Vegeta shifted his gaze to ceiling before he answered, " No, I've just been thinking."

" I know! That's what took me so long in the bathroom." She stared at the same spot on the ceiling that Vegeta was fixating on. " I looked at myself in the mirror and had one of those "How did I get here?" moments."

" And you know what, Vegeta? I'm so happy about how my life has turned out. It has all this meaning now, I'm not just some crazy kid running around on every whiff and woo anymore." She snaked her arms around his waist and moved closer to him. " I mean you and Trunks and this new baby. I feel spectacular about it. Like my life is complete. Like my life is so full and wonderful."

Vegeta mulled over her words. Was that how he felt, especially with a new child? It was, he realized, what Bulma said was a lot like he felt. He did like how his life was, he was truly excited about having another child. Vegeta finally felt like his life had a true meaning behind it. He was fully complete and happy.

And he couldn't believe it had taken him this long to finally figure it all out.

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A/n There you go.

Alex


End file.
